My friend Thom Moore died on Saturday at the age of 74. He was a brilliant musician and songwriter, and his work held a special place in my heart. So I’m going to talk about him and share some of his tunes with you.

This year has seen a lot of long-overdue discussion of (and action against) sexual harassment, and with it a focus on the “toxic masculinity” that underlies it and other societal ills. In some ways, the world has almost always skewed toward the patriarchy, but there are some elements of the culture that are actually fairly recent developments, which a look back through recent history will serve to illustrate. We’ll start with my central thesis: the modern American model of masculine and feminine roles is a post-World War II invention.